Pre-Appointment Jitters
Glowy eyed Zack and Dante give you love and kisses, and if you know Zack he gives lots of slobbery kisses.
It seems that a lot of women have frequently had their surgery within a week of discovering that they had breast cancer, it has been two weeks for me now so I have had plenty of time to think about it (maybe too much time). The anxiety of it all finally got to me today so I ran errands for several hours to work off some steam (no spa, no exercise, apparently I use errands to run off steam). Part of the reason is because the errands were nagging at me to get them done.
I am sincerely hoping that they schedule my surgery tomorrow. I finally came to a decision on what I want to do if the surgeon supports it and insurance will pay for it, I have decided to get a double mastectomy. I can be talked out of it, but at 31 years old, reading all of the cases of women who went on 3 to 15 years later to get cancer in the other breast which includes my own grandmother. I have over 50 years left to live in my life and I am not sure I am up for this twice. I am hoping that this may get me out of radiation (*fingers crossed*). For those that wonder why radiation is such a concern is that radiation limits your options on reconstruction (ie. it means you have to use a muscle from your stomach or your back to create your new breast, which means more scars and more recovery, I would prefer the good old fashioned silicon route if I can).
I am hoping that tomorrow we find out what subtype of cancer I have. The subtypes involve the kinds of hormones that the cancer uses to fuel its growth – these include estrogen, progesterone or Her-2. The other kind that it could be is one that is not receptive to any of those, which these days is unfortunately a bit tougher to treat (called triple negative breast cancer). It usually takes about a week after biopsy to get this information, and it sounded like they anticipated having this information for me tomorrow.
To those that are curious about what stage I am – we will not know the stage (if the cancer has spread) until after I have had surgery (one of the reasons I want to go ahead and get surgery over with). I am most likely stage I or stage II.
I will try to get a basic update up on the blog as soon as I can, my appointment is at 11:00 AM.
My appointment tomorrow hopefully will get a lot of questions answered and hopefully get me moving toward a path to recovery (and maybe cut back on the number of cancer websites I read – what did people do before the internet?). Keep sending your love, prayers and good vibes. We appreciate all of the love and support we have received the last 2 weeks, we love you all!.
